In a recent article, I argued that integrated assessment models (IAMs) “have crucial flaws
that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis.” In fact, I would argue that calling
these models “close to useless” is generous: IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a
perception of knowledge and precision that is illusory, and can fool policy-makers into thinking
that the forecasts the models generate have some kind of scientific legitimacy. IAMs can be
misleading – and are inappropriate – as guides for policy, and yet they have been used by the
government to estimate the social cost of carbon (SCC) and evaluate tax and abatement policies.

Pindyck's is indeed an argument for ignorance. He is quite pessimistic that anybunny, economist or climate scientist knows anything, from discount rate to climate sensitivity to damage functions. Choice of discount rate, of course can yield any answer the mythical anybunny might wish, but according to Pindyke it is worse because even probability distributions for any of these are improbable. Thus IAM's become computer driven fantasy

So what to do. Well, really really bad outcomes are so really bad that it doesn't matter what discount rate you chose if you lose the economy. Pindyck is an economist.

So Pindyck's idea is get a bunch of wise heads together and figure out
what the most probable really really bad thing that might happen is and figure out how bad it really would be.

I have argued that the problem is somewhat simplified by the fact that what matters for policy is the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. How probable is such an outcome (or set of outcomes), and how bad would they be? And by how much would emissions have to be reduced to avoid these outcomes? I have argued that the best we can do at this point is come up with plausible answers to these questions, perhaps relying at least in part on consensus numbers supplied by climate scientists and environmental economists. This kind of analysis would be simple, transparent, and easy-to-understand. It might not inspire the kind of awe and sense of scientific legitimacy conveyed by a large-scale IAM, but that is exactly the point. It would draw back the curtain and clarify our beliefs about climate change and its impact.

I started working with dynamic system models in the late 80's. After about three years I realized it required a huge multidisciplinary effort. Three years later I realized acquiring the data to feed them cost millions of $. Even later I realized I had to program human response to events and incoming information. What killed me was the realization that human response could be irrational, unpredictable, unfathomable, and could never be put in a computer program.

This is one huge problem I see with the current IAM generation and work flow. They need to build a homo sapiens brain interface. I'm serious, I think I know how to do it. If you want to discuss it I'm available at times when I'm not trying to knock off communist regimes.

FL, when I worked with dynamic systems models in the late '60's, I found that my efforts could be predictive for physical systems where the physics was well known. When I later worked with dynamic models in the mid-80's, I again found this to be true and was able to work around situations involving non-linear dynamics. That said, I think your claims aren't justified regarding humans.

We know from history what people will do, even though their individual reactions may appear irrational. Basically, when things become seriously intolerable (or potentially deadly) we simply move to some other location. Think of the migrants during the Dust Bowl years, the waves of immigrant to the US in the 19th and 20th century, those fleeing wars in Iraq and Syria or droughts in sub-Saharan Africa, all trying to enter Europe. Migration is the response which is likely to prove to be the most disruptive result of climate change. It's said that there are perhaps 10 million more refugees who would move to Europe, if they could. Once some critical threshold is passed, people "vote" with their feet.

As for your idea of "improving" the interface between humans and computers, haven't you already shot yourself in the foot by pointing out how irrational, unpredictable and unfathomable the human brain happens to be? Then too, there's the basic question of whose brain(s) are considered "acceptable" to be so connected...

Pindyck's argument may be less tight than he thinks, and he may be reinventing the wheel. He evidently wants a COE (Congress Of Experts) with himself presumably in the lead to replace COP and the ICCP Summary for Policy Makers.

His main point 2., for instance, is that, without quantifying his words, "we know very little about climate sensitivity." This is not correct. Data and models continue to point to S about 3, and this estimate is sharper than before:http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/01/marvel-et-al-2015-part-1-reconciling-estimates-of-climate-sensitivity/

He also objects to the use of a quadratic (in T) expansion of a damage function, then goes on to say that a cubic expansion would "give us a very different expected loss." This is not how Taylor expansion works, nor how polynomial approximation in general works.

The question still raised by his remarks is: would a COE really help, and btw who gets to choose the experts?

> I have argued that the problem is somewhat simplified by the fact that what matters for policy is the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. How probable is such an outcome (or set of outcomes), and how bad would they be?

I'll have a go: Climate change breaks agriculture. After a few years of starvation (or a somewhat longer period of food insecurity) the leader of a nuclear power, with the support of their citizens, looks at one of the other nuclear powers and decides, "You ain't got it so bad. I'm takin' what you got." To which the envied power replies, "Like hell you will." A strategic nuclear exchange follows. Most everyone dies. Those who don't wonder if it wouldn't be better if they had. Think "The Road". More generally, I'd say that a climate-change-induced world war would be the worst outcome. You might attribute low probability to that outcome but if you're calculating Bayes risk the badness-weighted probability will be a major contributor to the total value.

@ Hank RobertsRE the Virginia paper. I loved the opening sentence Insofar as establishment climate science has glossed over and minimized such fundamental questions and uncertainties in climate science, it has created widespread misimpressions that have serious consequences for optimal policy design.Lawyers certainly don't write like scientists. Still with all that sound scientific advice from such people as Ross McKitrick, Richard Lindzen, and Roger Pielke, Sr. I suppose we can assume the author knows what he is talking about. :)

Eli's last post noted that the poles are ~ 50 degrees cooler than the equator, a gradient of about 1.8 degrees of latitude per degree of temperature.

Now that business as usual has made the world officially one degree warmer than the 19th century , may one ask Brian why , if nobody much noticed as the climate of their southern neighbors segued north into their own back yards at a rate of a couple of miles a year, everyone will suffer momentous and tragic events ranging from extreme misfortune to utter ruin , or experience violent, sudden and destructive changes in the features of the earth if that rate accelerates to five miles a year?

I ask because that litany of calamities is the definition of 'catastrophic'.

Indeed, one can ask why, since one suffers no ill effects in plummeting the first 9 stories from the top of the building at speeds ranging from 0 to 40 m/s, will one suffer catastrophic damage in falling one more floor to the ground at only slightly higher velocities.

Indeed, Russell, it is not the change that imposes the catastrophe. It is the limits of the system in which the change occurs.

Russell: Exactly. You are asking for an explanation that can only be bafflegab. The natural decay of CO2 effectiveness per ppmv coupled with the decline of cheap hydrocarbon energy is the true future of business as usual. Therefore, to have a 100% certainty of CAGW requires exponential growth of the impacts from CO2 that produces an irreversible tipping point of wild weather, Tsunami-style SLR, mass extinctions, uncontrolled allergies, dead oceans, and so on. This is the cartoon of warmists painted by deniers. Some of the warmist lot buy into the end of the world. Someone as brilliant as you understands that apocalypse fetish is a very common uncontrollable human emotion. In this case, it's the flip-side of the deniers claiming the economic world will be destroyed by solar panels and windmills.

By Jove Russell's got it! When the sea comes up, driving people from the coasts, and heat & floods cut way into food production, so that all land is desperately need for both living space and farm land, we can make it all good just by singing "Way down upon the Suwannee River."

P.S., the mercury from India's and China's coal burning is now falling in increasing amounts in North America http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-01/uoc--mli012616.phpand, obviously, in the Northern Pacific Ocean. Those fish the nutritionists want you to eat more of, like salmon, will be among the early recipients thereof.

Yeah, that gray cloud you can see over and east of India and over and east of China.

Russell, we’ve had this type of conversation on a number of occasions now, and yet you persist in making a rooky mistake in physiology where you confabulate the thermal performance breadth (to use Huey’s terminology) and even the thermal tolerance range of an organism with its optimal thermal envelope. In other words, just because a species can function in a fairly wide range of temperatures for short periods of time, and just because it can tolerate extremes of temperature for very short periods of time, does not mean that it’s optimal thermal range can be shifted much from its inherent physiological constraints. Further, you are putting plants, poikilotherms and homeotherms in the same basket when in fact they have very different responses to changes in temperature.

And you completely ignore the ecological sequelæ that result from shifts in mean environmental temperature. Such shifts may still be within the range of one species’ thermal optimum, or outside it but within the range of its performance breadth, but when there is competition with other species and/or adverse responses in prey species, there is an overall greater pressure on the considered species.

Further, temperature synergises with other environmental non-biotic parameters such as water availability, humidity, habitat structure, and so on. There are also emergent physiological responses to changes in mean temperature, such as the temperature dependent sex selection of many reptiles.

You persist in your incredulity that a change in several degree will have an effect on species. Ironically, you mention the change in temperature with latitude, as if that supports your case for tolerance of wide ranges of temperature, but you fail to acknowledge how species distributions can be exquisitely sensitive to latitude, and as I have previously pointed out, to altitude.

When all of the above is put together, it’s clear to see that species’ tolerances of temperature changes are profoundly impacted by changes in other abiotic environmental factors. And for every additional species in an ecosystem with which other species interact - whether as symbionts, predators, prey, or in more distal but still connected relationships – the viable thermal range for any particular species experiences ever more pressure at the ends of the ranges. Expand this to regional collections of ecosystems and to the whole biosphere, where ecological interactions become ever more complex and niche pressure grows, and very quickly it becomes apparent that many species end up being highly constrained in the amount of temperature change to which they can adapt without consequence.

I commend to your consideration again the XKCD cartoon above, as it encapsulates all this in a few frames. Ecology is a complex systems science with which you obviously have much unfamiliarity. Further, you seem to think that if you can’t see it happen, or if it doesn’t happen within your lifetime, it’s not a Thing.

I beseech you again to desist from your disparagement of the seriousness of warming the planet, and to go to visit your nearest ecology department and speak with a thermal ecophysiologist. Heck, most smart ecologists, even if they don’t specialise in thermal ecology, will have enough understanding to speak with you about this for an hour at least.

Your'e addressing an escapee from the Environmental Ecology Lab, so please do explain how in the name of refugia theory, plants, poikilotherms and homeotherms whose range exceeds a few degrees of latitude or thousands of feet of elevation will suffer catastrophe, as opposed to range changes and niche displacements ?

Of course I realize webs will be altered faster than relatively immobile species can likely survive, but I'm addressing the human condition , and you don't have to be a daft dominionist to acknowledge that it's hard for people to notice in their lifetimes what climate change does within their walking range. Not all threats are existential nor is all change catastropic, evolutionary changes included, and lord knows how many of those specimens of H. sap. from Joseph Banks onward have already instigated--

"Thank you for the cartoon, but I do not share its assumption of a half degree per decade ramp-up from now to 2100.

I suspect that the XKCD temperature is in Fahrenheit, given that it's written by a USAdian* for USAdians. I'd be most surprised if it was intended as Celcius.

In that light, assuming that #1379 was published in 2014 as Webcite and archive.is indicate, XKCD was inferring a 0.19 C increase per decade to 2100 - which is eminently within the estimates of the best science.

"...please do explain how in the name of refugia theory, plants, poikilotherms and homeotherms whose range exceeds a few degrees of latitude or thousands of feet of elevation will suffer catastrophe, as opposed to range changes and niche displacements ?"

Oh Russell, for Pete's sake, I indicated that thermal tolerances are modified by many factors. Not all of them are negative, and that is exactly why refugia exist across latitudes.

However when the entire globe is warmed, and at a rate at which genotypes cannot evolve to keep up (irrespective of perambulatory mobilities or otherwise), for many species any phenotypic plasticity is going to be pushed to beyond tolerance. And even in species whose own thermal tolerances are sufficiently adaptable, their ecosystem companions might not be so fortunate, which, given the interconnectedness of ecosystems and their member species, means that it's not only the directly temperature-sensitive species that will be affected.

"...and you don't have to be a daft dominionist to acknowledge that it's hard for people to notice in their lifetimes what climate change does within their walking range."

Come on Russell, that's just a run-of-the-mill logical fallacy. You aren't really going to run with that, are you?

"Not all threats are existential nor is all change catastropic, evolutionary changes included..."

Again with the logical fallacies; two in one phrase this time. Why are you arguing like this? You can do better... and you are skirting my suggestions to speak with your nearby ecologist colleagues - why don't you want to speak face-to-face with professionals in the field?

[*I have a Chilean friend who foams at the mouth whenever people refer to folk from the States as Americans - apparently South Americans are proud of their Americanness, but do not like to be put in the same boat as people from the States, or to be omitted from an acknowledgement of what America is. He insists that "Americans" does not describe just people from the USA.

> faster than relatively immobile species can > likely survive, but I'm addressing the human condition

Know that however ugly the parts appearthe whole remains beautiful. A severed handIs an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and starsand his history... for contemplation or in fact...Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness ....Love that, not manApart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,or drown in despair when his days darken.

Please provide a link to a non-paywalled comprehensive report on thermal ecophysiology predicting mass extinctions that details the "gold standards" employed for the studies and the assumptions used etc. The non-paywalled peer reviewed papers I have found only refer to paywalled papers to explain how they actually conduct the experiments. Also, most of the papers were about the tropics. Since the tropics are predicted to have the lowest temperature departures under AGW, this is the one part of the planet that one could assume relative stability as compared with the Temperate climate zones.

I'm also interested in what thermal ecophysiology predicts about the potential for mass extinction at the base of the oceanic food-chain due to temperature and pH departures.

Any help in identifying useful references that show the warts and skeletons in plain view would be useful.

The bulk of material that I have is paywalled, which is a consequence of having institutional access to most of the best scientific literature. It would be a time-consuming exercise for me to go through my folders of PDF or through my bookmarks, but I will try to pick a sample of papers that might still be open access and that touch on your query.

There is a wealth of material about non-tropical responses, although it's interesting to note as an aside that many warm-adapted species are threatened too, because their physiologies are often "pushed against" the upper limits (such as enzyme kinetics, thermodynamics) of their biochemical processes. It is therefore a dangerous gambit to assume that warmth-adapted species are less vulnerable to global warming.

It's also important to note that aside from direct thermal ecophysiological effects and direct synergies of temperature with other parameters such as oxygen levels or pH, there are many other environmental factors that may or may not change with global warming but that will indirectly feed back to the thermal ecophysiological response of a species: one example would be the manner in which species interactions are modified by the phenological changes of one or more species in a suite, to impact on other species in the suite.

Anyway, my lunch breack is over so bear with me and I'll see what I can come up with.

Please provide a link to a non-paywalled comprehensive report on thermal ecophysiology predicting mass extinctions that details the "gold standards" employed for the studies and the assumptions used etc.

We're in to impossible standards of proof here.

There's no analogue for the rapidity of AGW. Ecologists can only point to the known fragility of ecosystems in the face of rapid environmental change and ask that we reason from inference. Which involves the counter-question: why *wouldn't* rapid, global environmental change drive extinctions?

BBD: You misunderstand my request. I'm just looking for the current state of the science standards of how field data gets scaled up to predicting what the critters do under stress. I am familiar with (not expert in) the rube-goldberg way epidemiology and toxicology calculates reference doses and cancer slope factors. I am expert in and understand the shortcomings of the somewhat less convoluted way EPA and others calculate inhalation, ingestion, and dermal absorption exposures.

These are the types of sausage grinder methods employed in thermal ecophysiology I'm looking for.

When you say: "Ecologists can only point to the known fragility of ecosystems in the face of rapid environmental change and ask that we reason from inference." I think you are selling these scientists and their methods quite short: you make them sound like anthropologists.

Sounds to me like a demand for an impossible standard of evidence. You appear to be asking for a synthesis at ecosystem level of countless species' tolerance to a warming environment. You don't need it. All you need to do is reason from inference. We already know that rapid warming will be ecologically calamitous because it will outpace many species' ability to migrate or adapt. So they will be wiped out and food webs will unravel and yet more extinction will result. Sure, deny it if you want, but don't expect to be taken seriously thereafter. Life's too short.

BBD: You are now just repeating yourself using the same appeal to an astrology-based system of problem solving. Your system of "logic chopping" mirrors the mid-level denizens of the WUWT denier cranks.

I've checked the XKCD wiki and the units are indeed Celcius and not Farenheit, so I owe Russel an apology on that score. However I would stress that Russ doesn't really get out of jail even on that point, because:

1) 4.5 C by 2100 is not beyond the bounds of the probability density function for the collection of scenarios, and

2) even if it took two, three, or four centuries for 4.5 C of warming to be realised (and we're not that far from being committed to it...), the impact on the planet in the future is basically going to be exactly the same.

Now I understand that Russell appears to be rather lackadaisical about what happens once his three score and ten and elipsis expire, but the future denizens of this planet are likely to be somewhat less sanguine about such a cavalier attitude.

BBD: Apologies about the snark, I did not realize you had become the master of decorum. I will try and be gentler with your delicate sensibilities. (Blast, there I go again)

In any event, you still have nothing and no bunny as of yet, has provided any sort of minimal technical support of mass extinction predictions by the ecothermophysiology field besides a single general inference. This inference, by the way, is based on the erroneous assumption that the current time rate of change in climate is somehow unprecedented. D-O EventsOr that the temperatures levels themselves will be unprecedented. Eemian Model for Future AGW?

Another shortcomming of this bare-bones elementary inference that is repeatedly advanced with sophomoric confidence is that GCM simulated AGW increases will be in night-time, winter and in high latitudes where abrupt climate change is the norm, indicating that bugs and bunnies (no offense) are evolutionarily adapted to abrupt climate change.

However, this inference of no likely significant harm is just one of many working hypothesis. At this point, experiments and/or field investigations can be designed and executed, which they have.

All I'm asked for is the basics on how is that data analyzed and what are the fundamental principles of the models used to evaluate the thermal consequences on the little critters.

The non-paywalled papers I've read always refereed to other papers that describe these "standard" methods of analysis. So, I know what I am asking for exists, but no bunnies on this blog who predict mass extinction from thermoecophysiological trama can point out any of these methods or assumptions. Unfortunately, these papers are behind paywalls, so I can't access them myself.

Again, BBD just keeps repeating his favorite simplistic working hypothesis under the mistaken assumption that everyone shares his particular strain of Dunning-Kruger, therefore has convinced himself it is the final word on the subject.

D-O events were centred on the N Atlantic. They show up strongly in the Greenland ice cores but they did not cause major, synchronous global climate change.

At its peak, Eemian global average temperatures were between 1 - 2C warmer than the Holocene average. Not much, compared to the likely impact of the modern increase in CO2 forcing. Climate change during the Eemian took place over millennia, not centuries. The *rapidity* of change is the problem with AGW. Mind you, since you mention the Eemian, it's worth remembering that MSL highstand was ~6m above the Holocene average. It's remarkable what just 1-2C can do.

Again, BBD just keeps repeating his favorite simplistic working hypothesis under the mistaken assumption that everyone shares his particular strain of Dunning-Kruger, therefore has convinced himself it is the final word on the subject.

"...no bunnies on this blog who predict mass extinction from thermoecophysiological trama [sic] can point out any of these methods or assumptions."

I've indicated to you previously that you are asking a lot in a simple sentence. I had no opportunity over the weekend to go through my bookmarks and PDFs at home, but I've had a trawl through some of my work material over lunch. As my older stuff is at home there's little in the way of historical reviews of thermal ecophysiology, but there should still be something here nevertheless.

I searched only for the tag or keyword "thermal", and in some cases I've included either the note that I added to the bookmarks or a nacent parenthetical observation. I've not bothered to check if they're paywalled, because on this computer everything will automatically be visible to me. And anyway, I rather think that you need to do a little searching yourself - if you strike a paywall there's nothing preventing you from submitting a request to one of the authors for a copy of the paper. Science isn't restricted to just what you can find for no effort using a search engine.

It also needs to be restated that it is a folly of oversimplication to assume that only thermal tolerances are the issue with global warming. There are many interactions with non-temperature effects, with indirect effects, with downstream effects, and with emergent effects, and indeed some of the references below make comment on this.

Further, it behoves any genuinely interested party to educate themselves to the extent that they can sensible understand and discuss the subject at hand. Ecology, as a complex interactive systems discipline, can be a challenge for a neophyte: in this way it is similar to a study of immunology. I've had the pleasure to teach both, and I recommend that anyone who wants to participate in a discussion of the nuances of either science should first sit down and spend a few weeks/months seriously learning the range of basics to the level that one would in an introductory university course on the field. After all, it's not up to someone else to distill a potted, executive summary for your benefit, so that you can employ particular tropes without properly understanding their context, limitations, and implications. That sort of drive-through education might be expedient in the ideological meme-osphere, but it isn't scientific.

Anyway, I've already given most of my lunch break to this so knock yourself out:

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/1/99.shorthttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534703002544http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01386.x/fullhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/0012-9658%282006%2987%5B1896:PBCOTC%5D2.0.CO;2/fullhttp://jeb.biologists.org/content/213/6/901.shorthttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519310003632http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/11-1930.1/fullhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534713001298 (loaded with contentious assumptions)http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060325http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10/15/rspb.2012.1890.shorthttp://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n9/full/nclimate1539.htmlhttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7335/full/nature09670.html (important to note that just because some species might be able to evolve to tolerate temperature change, does not mean that their ecosystem colleagues can adapt in the same way – this means that thermal phenotypic/genotypic plasticity is not a guarantee of survival)http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X07000842 (highlights the play of kill and trigger mechanisms)http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/03-0788/abstract (nb intraspecies geotypic adaptation – shrimp translocations Fenner conference, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1523-1739.2003.01636.x/abstract)http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9670665&fileId=S0094837300014111http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01020.x/fullhttps://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/report/full-report/http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6234/571.shorthttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evo.12258/fullhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12144/fullhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12062/fullhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/14-0802.1/fullhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12559/full (stresses my previous point that ecophysiological constraints are only a small part of the overall ecosystem response to change in mean temperature)http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/13-0875.1/abstract (as above)http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12192/fullhttp://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1789/20141097.shorthttp://icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/4/648.shorthttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12355/fullhttp://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-015-3302-x#page-1

Strange, I was told that the first of my three posts was successfully saved, but there's no sign of it. Trying once again:

"...no bunnies on this blog who predict mass extinction from thermoecophysiological trama [sic] can point out any of these methods or assumptions."

I've indicated to you previously that you are asking a lot in a simple sentence. I had no opportunity over the weekend to go through my bookmarks and PDFs at home, but I've had a trawl through some of my work material over lunch. As my older stuff is at home there's little in the way of historical reviews of thermal ecophysiology, but there should still be something here nevertheless.

I searched only for the tag or keyword "thermal", and in some cases I've included either the note that I added to the bookmarks or a nacent parenthetical observation. I've not bothered to check if they're paywalled, because on this computer everything will automatically be visible to me. And anyway, I rather think that you need to do a little searching yourself - if you strike a paywall there's nothing preventing you from submitting a request to one of the authors for a copy of the paper. Science isn't restricted to just what you can find for no effort using a search engine.

It also needs to be restated that it is a folly of oversimplication to assume that only thermal tolerances are the issue with global warming. There are many interactions with non-temperature effects, with indirect effects, with downstream effects, and with emergent effects, and indeed some of the references below make comment on this.

Further, it behoves any genuinely interested party to educate themselves to the extent that they can sensible understand and discuss the subject at hand. Ecology, as a complex interactive systems discipline, can be a challenge for a neophyte: in this way it is similar to a study of immunology. I've had the pleasure to teach both, and I recommend that anyone who wants to participate in a discussion of the nuances of either science should first sit down and spend a few weeks/months seriously learning the range of basics to the level that one would in an introductory university course on the field. After all, it's not up to someone else to distill a potted, executive summary for your benefit, so that you can employ particular tropes without properly understanding their context, limitations, and implications. That sort of drive-through education might be expedient in the ideological meme-osphere, but it isn't scientific.

Anyway, I've already given most of my lunch break to this so knock yourself out:

You can't use the modest effects of warming to date as a guide to the ecological damage that will be caused by future warming as the combined impact of magnitude and duration are totally different. False equivalence is a logical fallacy.

You've also managed to ignore that the spread of chytrid fungus is almost certainly human-caused. While warming will become increasingly the dominant driver of future extinctions,existing human-caused environmental damage is already huge and worsening.

The combined effects of warming with everything else going on are going to be disastrous. Ask any ecologist.

BBD: You appear to be one of those tools that has to be certain and right all the time. I've taken Bernard J's papers and used them as a jumping-off point. The three I found full pdf's for are somewhat foundational for the ecothermal mass extinction field.

At this stage, I'm just reading papers and educating myself on how the bug and bunny folks do their work and draw their conclusions. Obviously the Costa Rica research on froggies was bad, so I won't waste my time on that one.

Your suggestion that listening to some random ecologist is the path to enlightenment is just another data point indicating ... what I said previously.

BBD: You appear to be one of those tools that has to be certain and right all the time.

And you appear to be one of those tools who is still repeating rubbish about groupthink and greed distorting an entire field of science and there being a 'politically expedient disaster needle' - which means political promotion of a scientific position for some sort of political gain. This sort of nuttery, combined with your signature lack of charm, isn't going to get you anywhere.

Your suggestion that listening to some random ecologist is the path to enlightenment is just another data point indicating ... what I said previously.

Deliberate misrepresentation or just a tool who cannot even read a simple sentence containing only three words? What is the difference between 'ask any ecologist' and '[ask] some random ecologist', do you think, Howard? If you did that on purpose, make it the last time.

* * *

Now, why won't you defend your argument? Explain to us all why rapid warming *won't* cause extinctions. I'm sure Bernard is as curious as I am to hear you defend a position (from ignorance) that challenges an entire discipline.

"At this stage, I'm just reading papers and educating myself on how the bug and bunny folks do their work and draw their conclusions."

Howard, I've been relatively patient with you but you seem to be determined to demonstrate that you are not engaging in good faith.

You cannot "educate" yourself in ecology and in thermal ecophysiology by simply reading a few scientific papers and accepting a newpaper report as evidence of something being "discredited". I explicitly told you this above. The bunch of papers that I listed do not in and of themselves contain the foundational concepts that you would need to make the informed judgements about that body of work, and about what they indicate for extinction risk from warming. To achieve that level of understanding you need to go to first principles and learn a few semesters of tertiary-level ecology and physiology, which your Olympic-level jumping to conclusions indicates are abjectly lacking in your background.

Your conclusion that the Pounds et al paper is "discredited" is naïve and un-nuanced at best, and mendaciously fallacious at worst. Just as is your apparent dismissal of it as support for the effects of warming.

Let me walk you through it.

Pounds is one of the world's best-known anuran ecologists, and he and his colleagues admitted that the paper had statistic limitations. It's why Lips et al probably went to work on it in the first place.

Heck, at the time that Pounds et al came out in 2006 I myself thought that they'd gone too far down a particular rabbit hole, from my own experience - years earlier I'd seen the obvious waves of decline in the species I was studying. Yes, I have a close familiarity with chytrid: as I mentioned a few weeks ago I am intimately acquainted with it in the laboratory setting as well as in the field, having watched frogs fall dead from branches overhanging streams whilst I've been surveying. The fungus is a horrific and perniciously effective killer.

Anyway, the conclusion of the Lips' et al paper is trivially obvious to anyone who works with chytrid and anurans but Pounds' work, whilst probably overstating the climate link in its own context, isn't necessarily incorrect in some of its own conclusions. It has to be remembered that it was a preliminary paper in the field, and as such was unsurprisingly unsophisticated in its approach. However if you read Lips et al carefully you'd have seen that they don't dismiss Pounds et al out of hand, and if you were more familiar with the literature you'd have known that there were many papers published subsequently that supported both the essential weight of the (trivial) 'wave' effect of the fungus progression, and that acknowledged that Pounds' et al conclusions did contain some validity. Rohr et al is the first that springs to mind but there are many others and I'm not going to start listing them for you - you've already displayed your contempt for an objective approach to the literature. If you're curious though you could start by looking through the 242 publications to date that cite Lips et al - amongst them you will find work that supports the link between climate and the severity of infection with chytrid zoospores.

Pounds et al is not "discredited".

"Obviously the Costa Rica research on froggies was bad, so I won't waste my time on that one."

No, it was not obviously bad. Not to someone with an actual clue.

What is obviously bad is your capacity to make informed judgements about science from the distance perspective of a lay person out to find a gotcha. BBD has already flicked your ear about this, but I'll add my bit - if you had a cursory perusal with your lack of knowledge and came to the conclusion that trying to understand Pounds et al is a "waste of [your] time, then the only waste of time here is you.

Why is it that so many people think that they can absorb the science of complex systems in an hour or so, but in fact are abjectly way off the mark...? (Yes, I know Messers Dunning and Kruger, I know...)

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett, a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny who finally handed in the keys and retired from his wanna be research university. The students continue to be naive but great people and the administrators continue to vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional without Eli's help. Eli notices from recent political developments that this behavior is not limited to administrators. His colleagues retain their curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they, or at least some of them occasionally heeded his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.